The rehabilitated station has the whiff of Europe about it, with a colonnaded entrance, wrought iron ceiling and skylight, as do the chatty staff who helped me board the train. Pier 21, the ocean liner terminal turned museum anchored behind the station reminds you that, in spite of its long indigenous First Nations’ history, this is a nation built by immigrants up until the 1970s, the hanger handled nearly one million refugees fleeing economic depression, revolution and war. Under the warm midday sun, the stroll along the waterfront peeled back the strata of time. My westbound train for Montreal left at 1pm. It’s a lot to digest and there’s one extra thing guaranteed to make this train ride better than most: good-mood food all along the way. And appropriately, for an overnight odyssey that covers 836 miles, three provinces and two time zones in 22 hours, there are legions of stories to tell on and off the rails. It’s lived through the Great Depression and D-Day, 21 Canadian prime ministers and 137 Celine Dion singles. Rail travel is on the up, but The Ocean has been on the go for nearly 120 years.
A passport to largely unknown places, to towns where stones remain unturned and to where the traffic jam has never truly arrived. This is the oldest continuously operating passenger train in North America, having travelled many hard miles along narrow-gauge lines, and it is like Atlantic Canada itself. Three times a week, typically around lunchtime, a westbound train rolls out of Halifax’s downtown harbour, skirting lobster boats, wholesale fish markets and boardwalk restaurants that, once past the suburbs, gradually give way to the inland lighthouses of New Brunswick and sugar maple forests of Quebec.
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